The Virtual Stoa

Jack London, author of The Iron Heel and many other novels and stories, born 12 January 1876, died 22 November 1916.

Caroline Benn, socialist educationalist, born 13 October 1926, died 22 November 2000.

He’s got a tapedeck in his tractor
And he listens to the local news
He finds out where the bass are bitin’
While he’s plowin’ to the country blues.
He was a cowboy and he knew I loved him well,
A cowboy’s secrets you never tell -
No, there’s nothin’ like the loving
Of a hard-drivin’ cowboy man.

He’s got a tapedeck in his tractor
While he’s plowing up his daddy’s land;
He’s got more horse sense
Than I ever seen in any man.
He was a cowboy and he knew I loved him well,
A cowboy’s secrets you never tell,
No, there’s nothin’ like the lovin’
Of a hard-drivin’ cowboy man

On Saturday nights we go dancin’ in town,
And all the boys’ll order up another round;
In the summertime,
We look forward to the rodeo.
On Saturday nights we go to town,
And all the boys’ll order up another round;
When he rides saddle bronc
I wait to hear that whistle blow.

He’s got a tapedeck in his tractor,
I can hear him when he’s comin’ home.
Then he holds me in the rocking chair
And sings me the love song.
He was a cowboy and he knew I loved him well
A cowboy’s secrets you never tell
No, there’s nothin’ like the lovin’
Of a hard-drivin’ cowboy man

No, there’s nothin’ like the muscles
Of a hard-drivin’ cowboy man.

Robert Simpson, composer and socialist, born 2 March 1921, died 21 November 1997.

From tehgraun, on Saturday:

Barbara Cartland was mistakenly included in our catalogue of inspiring women (and in the accompanying illustration) for having fought for decent pensions (From lesbian vets to Donatella Versace, page 14, G2, yesterday). We meant Barbara Castle, the former Labour cabinet minister and MP for Blackburn who later became Baroness Castle, and who campaigned on pensions and equal pay until her death at the age of 91 in 2002. She was, fortunately, celebrated in a subsequent contribution in the same piece. Barbara Cartland was famous for her romantic novels, which she wrote until her 90s, and her signature pink outfits.

[thanks PB, via DB]

I was rereading chunks of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s imperishable classic, The Invention of Tradition, the other night, while munching on a Chinese takeaway, and this passage made me laugh and laugh…

(more…)

Henry Hyndman, founder of Britain’s first socialist party, the Social Democratic Federation; born 7 March 1842, died 20 November 1921.

The press are suggesting that Trescothick going home somehow means no place for Panesar in the England XI. Awful if true. More likely, as a colleague suggested to me, Fletcher prefers Giles because it’s easier for Jones to catch the ball when it isn’t spinning. Grrr.

UPDATE [22.11.2006]: Don’t miss Chris Dillow on Monty Panesar and Market Failure.

Jasper Milvain buys the Saturday edition of the Guardian, and has very kindly forwarded to me a discussion of hair that appeared there yesterday, and which was curiously suppressed from the online edition. John Mullan was reviewing Alastair Fowler’s new edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Here’s Mullan:

“So if the longer notes at first appear digressive, they return you to the poem convinced that the editorial digression showed you the very by-ways of Milton’s imagination. Take the long paragraph of Fowler’s small print excited by Milton’s first description of Adam and Eve’s hairstyles — of Adam’s “hyacinthine locks” and Eve’s “wanton ringlets”. We start with Saint Paul’s strictures on when women should cover their hair, then wander through a mini-essay on the significance of hair in epic poetry, a parenthesis on Milton’s own hairstyle and hair-colouring, suggestive examples of the depiction of women’s hair in 17th-century painting and some speculation about Milton’s “special sexual interest in hair”. You might think this is like listening to an engagingly eccentric professor, free-associating, in the library of his mind, yet soon the clinching references to the ways the poem fixes on Eve’s “golden tresses” convince you otherwise. Her “dishevelled” hair signifies what is both lovely and vulnerable about here, and the poet is as fascinated as the devil who gazes at her from his hiding place.”

Here’s what Fowler wrote in the 1971 edition of his book (I think I’ve got a later edition at home, so I’ll post any of Fowler’s subsequent thoughts on hair before too long):

“iv.301-8. The hair-length proper for each sex follows directly from the statement of their hierarchic relation; for, according to St Paul, ‘a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man: for her hair is given her for a covering’ (1 Cor. xi 7, 15; cp. the A. V. marginal glass on 10, which explains the covering is a ‘sign that she is under the power of her husband’). hyacinthine locks] When Athene ‘shed grace about his head and shoulders’, Odysseus’ hair flower ‘like the hyacinth flower’ (Homer, Od. vi 231). If a colour were implied, it might be either blue, the colour of the hyacinth flower or gem (i.e., the sapphire; cp. l. 237n), or just possibly tawny (the hyacinth of heraldry, near to the colour of M.’s own hair), or black (Eustathius’ gloss on the Homeric passage) or very dark brown (Suidas’ gloss); in fact, almost any colour at all. But it is just as likely that a shape is meant (the idealized treatment accorded to hair in antique sculpture?), or an allusion to the beautiful youth Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo but doomed to die. The elaborateness of the present passage lends some support to the theory that M. had a special sexual interest in hair. (In this connection cp. 496f, Lycidas 69, 175.)”

And here’s John Milton, Paradise Lost, iv.300-311:

“His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She as a veil down to her slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.”

There’s a story in today’s Observer about the children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, based on the true story of the love of Roy and Silo, two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo. We bought a copy in San Francisco’s A Different Light last year for one of our nephews, and it’s a pretty good book, with lots of pictures of penguins in it.

The Observer article, however, does rather overdraw the contrast between “liberal Manhattanites” and “small towns in the American heartland”. Tango is basically a conservative text, which strongly implies that the gay penguins’ relationship is legitimated through the baby-penguin-rearing activity that transforms them into a family unit deserving of respect. So it’s basically an Andrew-Sullivan-inflected gay penguin children’s book.

What America needs is a book to celebrate the lives of queer and sluttish non-baby-penguin-rearing male penguins. This is a group that is strikingly underrepresented in America’s lucrative and high-profile children’s book market.

In addition to its pair-bonded lesbian geese (Alice and Gertrude, I think), San Francisco Zoo used to have a nymphomaniac lady penguin. I wonder what happened to her.

The Stoa’s Fabius correspondent writes, very possibly for the last time:

Chris’s One-Time Dining Companion Not to be French President in 2007 Shock

Ah, so it was not to be. The results from the Parti Socialiste’s primaries show the Stoa’s candidate Laurent Fabius came in third place with 18.7% of the vote, behind Ségolène Royal on 60.7% and Dominique Strauss-Kahn on 20.6%. This means the second round of voting in which Fabius had hoped to come through will not take place, and Fabius has rallied to support Royal for president in the grand combat against the Right and extreme Right.

Still, as you can see from this handy map on Le Monde‘s website, at least Fabius managed to come in first place in two departments (Haute-Normandie, where his constituency is, and Haute-Corse), which is more than can be said for DSK.

Plus this may not be the end of Fabius’ presidential ambitions forever. As he has himself pointed out, by the time of the next election in 2012, he will only be the same age as Mitterrand was when first elected in 1981… (A cartoon in this week’s Le Canard Enchaîné satirically suggested that in the event of failing to be selected as PS candidate Fabius may instead grow a José Bové-style moustache in a bid to be adopted as the unified candidate of the anti-capitalist hard Left!)

Nevertheless, the outcome of last night’s vote means that the Laurent-Fabius-Watch will be taking an extended sabbatical, at least for the time being.

The complete Laurent-Fabius-Watch is here.

Long before he published his fine book about football in Eastern Europe, Behind the Curtain, Jonathan Wilson was writing for The Voice of the Turtle (currently in hibernation). Here’s his review of Puskas on Puskas: The Life and Times of a Footballing Legend, from 1999.

UPDATE [2.30pm]: I see that Jonathan also supplied something of an obit for tehgraun.

Victor Serge, revolutionary socialist, born 30 December 1890 in Brussels, died 17 November 1947 in Mexico City.

Robert Owen, utopian socialist, born 14 May 1771, died 17 November 1858.

The arrival of Mabel Atkinson at #236 brings to an end the fourth year of Dead Socialist Watching, which must make this one of the longest running blogserials in bloghistory. The complete DSW archive now begins here, there are still plenty more Dead Socialists to Watch and/or celebrate; their ranks are ever-expanding, alas, and your nominations are always, as ever, more than welcome.

Jennie Lee (also), Labour MP and Minister for the Arts, born 3 November 1904, died 16 November 1988.